Category: Stone Soules

Middle-of-the-Road (Middle) – town within the Barony of End tied strongly to the Dunadorian Central Government by virtue of its leadership. It is located off the North Trade Track on the way to the End-of-the-Road. A keep is under construction, with the main fortress being currently the tower of the Soulestone. Middle is magic friendly and open to many good and neutral religions, unlike much of Dunador. It is within easy distance to adventuring sites. It has a Blue Star Inn. [note: we hope to make into a barony with End becoming a Duchy someday; we’ll see.] Population: unknown.
>I have a few questions about things in the log:
>what is a “hide-behind”?
We don’t really know, just that they are small grey creatures with lots of teeth that are invisible when alive but appear when dead, that can only be seen in mirrors when alive. They like to try strangle you and/or plug you with poison daggers. We have an antidote to their poison.
> what’s the status of End in relation to Dunador?
It is a part of Dunador that does not pay taxes at the moment, that won’t until at least Trent does, I believe.

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Gerald is happy to get Alegra back safely and was worried about her. Especially after ensuring her identity, he simultaneously warns her to be more careful and congratulates her wisdom in surviving.
Gerald suggests various preparations in case the demon-worshippers attack us and/or Middle. First, realize that everyone (practically) hates demons. Second, don’t scare the populace of Middle. Third, don’t make people angry at us by making them think we incited the demon-worshippers to anger.
On the first point, the various churches in Middle (you have mentioned several) should be willing to help out. Decide whether or not to enlist their help. Just keep the second and third points in mind.
On personal preparation, we should consider magics available:
Alegra can prepare Glyphs of Warding on small items to give us of us as well as place around strategic points. She may be able to cast Divination to learn more info. Depending on what the demonspawn are, if she can Abjure them it’s nice. If she can Implore (reversed Abjure) a servant of Phaulkon to help fight the demonspawn, it would be of great use and conceivably relevant to the angel (or whatever).
Dari can probably cast useful third-level spells of strategic use: Plant Growth, Snare, and Stone Shape have permanent effects. If she is 6th level, Hallucinatory Forest also has a nice strategic use, especially if combined with Plant Growth. Protection from Lightning would be great against the beithir.
Gerald can help set traps if you want to do that, and Ludo might be able to as well. (Though Gerald’s probably better at the kind of outdoor traps I have in mind.)
The “everyone” that hates demons includes other adventurers. There’s a friendly group at Koralgesh, and we could tell them we are friends of Gram. King Ranore and Duke Konrad are a bit far off, but they might send someone to help out. Other opportunities abound, though we might not need (or want) any help at all.
David

Mind you, this attack took place on July, 3 2172.
We explored the city and learned that the beihir can leave it. We explored a few buildings of interest and saw some bugbears who had snakeskins for totems. They appeared to be enemies of the snake worshippers. We found a tunnel marked with the name “Tunnel” into the mountain in Runic II or III. Beithir sized. It had huge guardian stone golems.
We then planned to send in two groups from our base camp on the ridge (with everyone except the cavaliers there). The first would scout around the tunnel since we knew it was out of town currently, and the second would look around at night to see where there were lights (specifically in a library we were interested in). Both teams were to be invisible. The first team was Alegra and Elowier the mage-steward and Dari. The looked at the demonspawn a bit, but not too much interesting there. Dari fell off the wall here and turned visible. She left the city and we went around to the other side. We watched to see who came out of the “enemy” bugbear tower – this was before we knew it was bugbears. We then left and went to look at the tunnel.
Nothing was there, but Alegra shined her a continual light bead into the tunnel while Elowier stood at the gate to the courtyard where the tunnel was. Light kept reflecting back, like 1 flash then wait then two flashes then three etc. Finally this freaked out Alegra enough to leave. She went to where Elowier was supposed to be and said, “Okay, let’s go.” Then Elowier says, “Okay.” Then another voice, says, “No, Dari’s back in the tunnel.” We realize that this person is speaking with Alegra’s voice.

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The Anarchists
They intercepted a cargo shipment to the Barony that Ceydric went and followed them. They just dumped the stuff in a ditch and tried on purpose to have us receive a message on one of the people we killed there. It was garbage about the Duke of Andevar wanting the “royalist upstarts destroyed” or somesuch. That was what ultimately caused the Dunadorian Central Government to send us a small unit of troops headed by Al.
Zalk the Sage
He’s a sage at the School of Wizardry, foremost in Magic Item research who took a box we had brought him and figured out the combination so that none of the 100+ magic traps would destroy us or it. It had Tuggutian currency (paper) inside.
Great Old City
Looks like we found the remains of a group from S.M.A.R.T. in the desert monster’s lair. But the Jack of Clubs we just have a log in code…the one from S.M.A.R.T. blew up when we tried to open it (4-40 points damage).

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The Greate Olde City
There are tales of a vast civilization on a plateau in the Hadarna
mountains. From the descriptions it was a vast and wealthy place, perhaps as
large as one of the New World countries. Various tortuous and guarded routes
allowed entrance to the city. It was in search of one of these entrances that
the high wizard of Teft disappeared and has been assumed dead.
The city they describe is old enough to meet the rumors of these
ancient lands. If so then the city was inhabited by humans with a great and
complicated land. What happened to them? No one knows. The disappearance
of a civilization of such size seems to pose a problem.
There are hints that the King of Cromwell and Dunstill and Illic have
traveled through the mountains from the Indicara and found an entrance to the
land. Both returned with some small wealth from the jungles. Dunstill and
Illic failed in their quest, but with their information the King appears to
have succeeded. Neither seems to know much about the history, only that the
land in the mountains they record is a wasteland of crazed nomads.
Consulting the legends of the locals of the End area, there are stories
of a City of the Gods, a strange and magical place nestled high in the
mountains. The rumors seem to come from a relatively strong source. At one
point a cloud giant adventurer reports using his cloud to travel there. The
winds threatened to dash his castle against the peaks, and he was scared to
stay but he describes vast treasures in ancient coins, strange buildings, and
magical portals. A storm blew up shortly after his landing and he was forced
to negotiate his cloud castle out of the mountains quickly. He tried to return
but the winds never made it possible.
The rumor has been tentatively confirmed by a druid in SMART who was
owed a favor by a great eagle. The flight was VERY difficult but the eagle did
report a city of vast size, a city fit for the gods themselves. SMART was
eventually driven from the area by more and more coordinated attacks by a
group of demon worshipers (presumably the Lesser Ones and Great Ones).
—
Edwin says that End is “unquestionably” the largest city in the New World we have ever seen (Dunthrane was bigger before the War, though).
We are in a ruined city [the Great Old City] near End. We are the first PCs to ever visit End, apparently, and this city is oodles of fun. Beithir, sphinx, desert monster (in the Great Olde Woode), etc.
There are other ruins, but the Great Old City is the only one we have visited namely because to the west there is a zephyr roc before you arrive at the ruins which picks off adventurers rather easily. To the north there are supposed to be more, but some are really picked over quite a bit.